47th Samurai - Hardcover

Hunter, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743238095 ISBN 13: 9780743238090

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2007

Synopsis

In "The 47th Samurai, " Bob Lee Swagger, the gritty hero of Stephen Hunter's bestselling novels "Point of Impact" and "Time to Hunt, " returns in Hunter's most intense and exotic thriller to date.Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment at Iwo Jima, 1945, when their fathers, two brave fighters on opposite sides, met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived. More than sixty years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. His search has led him to Crazy Horse, Idaho, where Bob Lee, ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, has settled into a restless retirement and immediately pledges himself to Yano's quest.Bob Lee finds the sword and delivers it to Yano in Tokyo. On inspection, they discover that it is not a standard WWII blade, but a legendary shin-shinto katana, an artifact of the nation. It is priceless but worth killing for. Suddenly Bob is at the center of a series of terrible crimes he barely understands but vows to avenge. And to do so, he throws himself into the world of the samurai, Tokyo's dark, criminal yakuza underworld, and the unwritten rules of Japanese culture.Swagger's allies, hard-as-nails, American-born Susan Okada and the brave, cocaine-dealing tabloid journalist Nick Yamamoto, help him move through this strange, glittering, and ominous world from the shady bosses of the seamy Kabukicho district to officials in the highest echelons of the Japanese government, but in the end, he is on his own and will succeed only if he can learn that to survive samurai, you must become samurai. As the plot races and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that a ruthless conspiracy is in place, and the only thing that can be taken for granted is that money, power, and sex can drive men of all nationalities to gruesome extremes. If Swagger hopes to stop them, he must be willing not only to die but also to kill.

About this title

Review:

"This is the novel Hunter's fans have been waiting for....genius." (Booklist)

"Compelling, exciting, and satisfying" (Library Journal)

"Hunter is a great entertainer, one of our finest practitioners of the classic blood-soaked and propulsive American thriller. With fluid, confident prose he writes big stories of a man, mostly alone, who must go forth for us all and slay the dragon." (Daniel Woodrell, The Washington Post)

"Mr. Hunter writes [fight scenes] as well as, or better, than anyone in the business....I have only one major problem with Mr. Hunter: He doesn't write often enough." (Otto Penzler, The New York Sun)

"Bob Lee Swagger, retired marine master sniper and hero of bestseller Hunter's 1993 thriller, Point of Impact...returns in this riveting homage to the myth of the samurai....While the action builds to the inevitable climax, the joy of the journey will keep readers turning the pages." (Publishers Weekly)

Book Description:

Bob Lee Swagger goes to Japan to avenge a friend's death at the hands of the yakuzu. The eighth novel in one of the greatest sequences of action thrillers of our time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0743238095
• ISBN 13: 9780743238090
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 372